Chapter Text
"You know I love you, Gabe."
It's hardly the first time Jack's said it and Gabriel knows it won't be the last, but god damn, the Novosibirsk omnium looming on the horizon makes it–- god.
"Jack–"
"Gabe."
"Don't do this right now."
"Then when?” Jack snorts quietly. “After we’re both dead?"
"So what," Gabriel hisses, "you want to– to do this– and then go back to acting like everything is normal?"
"Gabriel, you know what our chances are tomorrow," Jack says, voice quiet. He doesn't meet Gabriel's eyes and instead shifts his weight so that he’s propped up over Gabriel on his forearm.
"I know." Gabriel closes his eyes, takes a long breath through his nose. "I know. It's just– you know what would happen."
He’s actually given this quite the extensive amount of thought. They'd be kicked from the strike team, bare minimum, if word got out. Probably court-martialed. Dishonorable discharge for fraternization. Kept under lock and key like the lab rats they were meant to be. The list goes on. Rumors and suspicion are one thing – shit happens in the trenches, soldiers gossip, and all that – but taking this any further is a risk neither of them can afford to take.
"Yeah, I know.” Jack leans down to press his forehead against Gabriel’s. “I can't say I care right now."
"I love you, Jack, that's why I care right now." He strokes the backs of his fingers down Jack's face; Jack turns his head and presses a kiss to his knuckles. "Please, let's just go to sleep. Please."
“God, this is shit,” Jack whispers, and doesn’t budge.
It pulls a laugh out of Gabriel, quiet and genuine.
“Jack, that’s the understatement of the century.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack says, laughing in return. “It’s still shit, though.”
“Yeah, it’s still shit.”
Gabriel traces the laughter lines in Jack’s face and commits them to memory before they can fade away.
Truly, what a shitty situation. He and Jack have been close for– well, for too long. Too close, for too long, with too many near misses of things coming to a head. Jack knows how Gabriel feels about him. Gabriel knows how Jack feels about him. There’s a long list of logical and acceptable reasons why they haven’t done anything about it.
“Jack.”
“You can keep saying my name.” Jack’s eyes are closed and his voice is muffled, turned into Gabriel’s palm.
“C’mon.”
“Well, that’s not my name.”
“Jack.”
Gabriel means for it to be exasperated but it comes out quiet instead, desperate, and Jack’s thumb is slowly tracing along his cheek, his beard, this upper lip, his lower lip, eyes half-lidded–
"Jack, please," Gabriel whispers, voice breaking. He doesn't even know what he's asking Jack for but he keeps begging anyways, whispering please over and over and the look on Jack’s face is somewhere between completely heartbroken and gloriously alive. Gabriel's hands are framing Jack’s face and his thumb is resting against the corner of Jack’s mouth and he can feel Jack tense up and inhale and then Jack is kissing him, and Gabriel knows immediately that this moment will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
He knows, but he kisses back anyways, and Jack chooses to ignore the broken noise Gabriel makes as he throws an arm up over Jack’s shoulders, buries a hand in his hair, pulls them closer.
Jack presses a line of chaste kisses down Gabriel’s jaw, his neck, and Gabriel buries his face in Jack’s shoulder in return, and he feels the sorry, sorry, sorry behind each kiss like knives between his ribs.
Neither of them are asleep when Jack’s alarm goes off two hours later. Jack lethargically slides his way out of Gabriel’s hold and sits up, swings his legs over the edge of the bed one by one, drops his head into his hands. Gabriel sits up behind him and slides a hand onto his knee and hopes to god that this is still okay, that they’re still normal, but then Jack’s hand covers his and squeezes.
Gabriel shuffles forward until they’re sitting side by side, pressed together in a long line, and they breathe together for a minute, two, before Jack finally sighs and turns towards Gabriel, reaches out to gently turn Gabriel by the chin, and for one wild moment Gabriel thinks that Jack is going to kiss him again, hopes that Jack is going to kiss him again, but Jack just presses his forehead against Gabriel’s and squeezes his eyes shut. Gabriel turns his hand over and rubs his thumb over Jack’s knuckles.
Gabriel understands. When Jack stands up, they both know it’s done, buried under red tape, laid to rest in a sarcophagus carved out of bureaucracy.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, only that Jack takes his shower bag and heads into the hallway at some point, and at some point after that, Ana’s sleep-rumpled shirt comes into view.
“Gabriel,” she says quietly, and she reaches out to tilt his chin up once it’s clear he won’t lift his head on his own. He meets her eyes reluctantly. He knows what she’ll see. What she’s seen. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
She looks over to the doorway, and Gabriel slowly follows her gaze to see Jack there, hair wet, shoulders slumped, dark circles aging him at least twenty years. Gabriel can’t look away, doesn’t even bother trying to, and Jack walks up, drops his bag next to their bed, and wraps himself around Ana, not for a second breaking eye contact with Gabriel.
Ana disentangles herself only enough to pull at Gabriel’s wrist so he takes the excuse for what it is and he levers an arm under Jack’s as he stands, pulls Ana in towards them. Jack buries his face in Gabriel’s neck.
“I’m sorry,” Ana whispers again, voice muffled between them.
“We’ll survive,” Gabriel says dully. “We have to. We always do.”